Argument!

General Talk

Well, after hearing your reasons for being a little ticked off at the customer i have to say i probably would of done and said the the same as you(i dont deal well with miserable people)But the difference is that i am trying to build a customer base while you are maintaining a customer base and that was my mindset on my humble opinion post. I have to agree at this point you dont need his foolishness.Good luck this season and may the cheap miserable misers go to your competitors

CHEESE.. We finally have been getting snow. The other day we were out plowing and we finished it all up. I get three extra calls, so I figured since I was still out & about, I could handle this 1 time plowing.

One particular customer, roughly 70 years old, was outside when I showed up shoveling the walkway. Mind you this was some heavy snow, so I get out of the truck and help her plus plow the driveway. She handed me some $$$, I did not even bother to look to see how much it was.

Minutes later hubby shows up from work and asks me how much she paid, so I pulled out the $$ and it was $40(it really was worth only $30) and he flipped out! He SNATCHED the $$$ out of my hand and went in the house only to come back out with $30...

So i ask him what this is all about, He says "This is not worth $40" and I concurred. But I let him know that his wife was shoveling when I showed up and obviously it was worth $40 to her. If you could have only seen his face after I said that. Suffice to say I told him not to bother calling me again.

So we should do it for fall cleanup but not snow, why? Time consuming you go to the door any ways right? half a sheet of paper is cheap.

Just seams like the way things are going is driving you up a wall
My good friend Albert Einstein once said "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Snow removal is a rush service, whereas fall cleanups you tend to have more time to waste.

We usually have to shovel our way to the door, and shovel our way back to the truck, going as fast as we possibly can. We do our best to get 50% clients done before they get home from work, the other 50% will only get their walkways cleared by the time they are leaving for work. (though, it all depends on when it snows).

If a client doesn't have their walkway cleared when they get home and when they wake up, we get complaints. No time to lose!

-

The reason the idea works better for fall cleanups, is because we're only going out once/twice for the client. If the leaves fall even more after we have done our job(s), it's not our problem anymore. We always expect arguments about whether or not we showed up. I wouldn't say a door hangar would work wonders, but maybe it'll shut a few complainers up.

When it snows, and if it snows every day for the rest of our lives, then it's our problem. We are paid to maintain the clients walkways throughout winter, so when the client complains it's a different story.

Overall, the door hangars don't prove anything, it could very well mean, "We showed up and did a crappy job" from a clients perspective.

The best thing to do, which is just as time consuming and irritating, would be to take photographs with a time stamp.

I'm rambling, I just woke up.

As for grass, if a client complains it's really easy to prove that you had showed up. The stripes in the lawn are often still visible when you go around for the next visit. No need for a door hangar here.